If the photo you’re using is a color photo, you will first need to convert it to black and white. There are several photo editing programs you can use. We use Picmonkey, which is free. If you’re using Picmonkey for the first time, follow these steps to convert your color photo to black and white. Next, print your photo onto watercolor paper.
Starting with Grayscale ImagesSimply because an image is in black and white doesn’t mean that it is a Grayscale image. Once your photograph is open, our first task is checking our Color Mode.Navigate to Image Mode RGB color to set your image to RGB.
If it is in Grayscale or some other color mode, Photoshop will convert it for you. Once this is done, you’ll be ready to add color to your image. Using Blending Modes to Add ColorOne of the simplest ways to add color to a black and white image is using Blending Modes. But rather than create a dozen layers with individual blending modes, we will create a single layer group with a group blending mode.
Here’s how to do it:. Press to create a New Layer. With that New Layer selected, press to group your new layer. Select your new layer group as shown above, and set your Blending Mode to “Color.”You’ll find Blending Modes in the pulldown tab directly under the top of the “Layers” panel.
Click to pull it down to set the blending mode of your Group to “Color” as shown above.Once your group is set to blending mode “Color” reselect your layer and let’s check out some ways to add color to our image. Some Ways to Add Colors to Your Image without PaintingYou can now add color into any layer you make inside your new group. The question is, how? Any way you can add color to layers is a way that will work. Let’s start with a simple and quicker, but rougher method using the Lasso Tool or even the Pen Tool,.The Lasso and the Pen Tool both do roughly the same thing in this situation. You’ll be drawing and outlining shapes, and then filling them with the Bucket Fill or by going to Edit Fill and using your foreground color. While this method does not give the most refined of results, it can be the fastest.
If you wish to take a more hands-on, controlled approach, you’ll want to keep reading to see the “painting” method using the Photoshop Brush tool. Using the Brush Tool to Paint Color into PhotographsIf you’re not there, return to the group you set to Blending Mode “Color.” Navigate to the blank layer you made there and select the Brush Tool in your toolbar.Press to select the Brush Tool, then right-click in your image to bring up the Brush Tool contextual menu. Select “Soft Round” as shown.Click the Foreground Color area of your toolbar (as shown above left) to bring up the Color Picker. Stick with colors much duller than you want your image to look like, as they’ll brighten up considerably when they’re painted on.Simply mouse over the areas of your image you want to be that color.
Be as precise as possible, but feel free to use the eraser tool as needed.You may find that your color, even though it is dull, appear garish. You can adjust this many different ways.Reducing the opacity, as shown above, of your layers, can reduce the intensity of your colors and make them more naturalistic.to add new layers whenever you want to add new colors. Keeping layers separate will give you greater control. And since they are contained within the same group, you’ll find they all conform to the same “Color” blending mode.Zoom in to add details as needed. Minor details, such as the right color of blue in the eyes, can really bring a colorized image to life.
Improve Garish Colors with the Hue/Saturation ToolIt can be all to easy to start working with a color that seems like it’ll be the right shade, only to turn out too bright, garrish or ugly. Here’s how to adjust it and continue painting.Paint or find a sample of the color you want to change to better suit your image.Press to bring up the Hue/Saturation tool.Adjust Hue, Saturation, and Lightness values until your color suits your image. As you can see above, the garish red has transformed to a more appropriate reddish brown.Alt + Click on the in your layers panel, beside your active layer inorder to hide all the other layers.
Then press the to select the Eyedropper tool. Click your painted swatch once to select the changed color as your foreground color.Alt + Click the same again to turn all the layers back on. Shortcut key will give you back the Brush Tool and allow you to return to painting like normal. Add as many or as few colors as you feel your image needs, in all the details you care to put in.And with minimal work and time invested, a black and white image is now full of rich color. Practice with the brush tool, as it is likely the best method for achieving excellent results in colorizing black and white photographs.
Have questions or comments concerning Graphics, Photos, Filetypes, or Photoshop? Send your questions to, and they may be featured in a future How-To Geek Graphics article.Image Credit:, in public domain.
Bob KeeferBob Keefer is a former newspaper art writer, a Harvard graduate, a resident of rural Oregon and long-time photographer. Bob has been making and selling hand-colored black and white photography since about 2002. Born in Alabama, he grew up in Los Angeles and went to school with a surprising number of movie stars’ kids. Bob got a bachelor’s degree in history of religion at Harvard University in 1975.As a newspaperman for many years he interviewed people like Bob Hope and Muhammad Ali, once spent the night in a Nevada brothel on the paper’s expense account (newspapers were more fun then), and developed a deep interest in art 20 years ago after Bob wrote about an oil painter.In 2006 Keefer was a fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Journalism Institute for Theater and Musical Theater in Los Angeles.
In 2013 he quit newspapering and became a full-time fine art photographer.It’s been a pleasure for us to take an interview with Bob Keefer and learn some interesting facts of his biography. We wish you a pleasant reading and viewing of Bob Keefer photography. Cattails 2013.93, 11″ x 15″. Cattails line a desert marsh in eastern Oregon.AP: Hi Bob! Thank you very much for finding the time to give us an interview. That’s a great honor for us.
We hope you will enjoy our questions. So please tell us what got you started?Bob: I’ve been taking pictures since I found my older sister’s unused Brownie camera in a closet when I was 12. The grittiness and graphic look of black and white has always appealed to me.
I still have a usable darkroom, though I haven’t actually used it in some years. Most of my first hand-colored photography was on photos shot with Tri-X film developed in Rodinal.I’m not even quite sure how I discovered hand coloring.
There are a few hand colored photos (including one of me as a toddler) in an old family album of ours, and I’ve long admired the work of Western landscape photographers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of whom used hand coloring. One example would be Fred Kiser, who set up a studio on the rim of Crater Lake in Oregon and sold hand-colored photos.AP: What a great start and discovery! Do you have any formal education in photography or were you self-taught?Bob: I’m self-taught. That is easier to do these days with the Web, of course, though hand coloring actually has very few resources available online, so that was mostly learned by experimenting.
Stump 2013.92, 11″ x 15″. An old stump is disappearing into the lush green forest on the shores of Foster Lake, on the western slope of the Oregon Cascades.AP: Yeah, I also think that a person can learn a lot by experimenting. What genre are your photos?Bob: Almost all my hand colored work is landscape.
The subject matter lends itself well to hand coloring, as people are more willing to accept an imaginative approach to color in a nature scene than, say, in a portrait. Most hand colored portraits I’ve seen, including most I’ve tried, are simply bad.AP: How would you describe your landscape photography?Bob: My work blends the mechanical precision of photography with the expressiveness of painting.
At best, the two approaches complement each other like two lines in a musical fugue. Very few people in the art world do serious hand colored photography.
That’s at least in part because of the vast number of cheesy hand colored photos out there of puppies, cute children and sunflowers.AP: Thanks for such beautiful description. You do you a very exquisite job. What’s your favorite piece so far?Bob: That’s like asking which one is my favorite child. Fortunately, photos can’t be jealous of one another, so it’s OK for me to answer. I really like the look of a 22×30-inch print I colored last year and titled, rather unimaginatively, “Forest 2012.40.” The photo creates a forest scene that is, at once, seductive, friendly and alien. Forest 2012.40, 22″ x 30″.
A dreamy woodscape on a foggy day in western Oregon.AP: I like that picture very much! I’d describe it as dreamy, fabulous and never-ending. What kind of equipment and techniques do you use to take your pictures?Bob: I shoot with a pair of Pentax K-5 cameras and their weatherproof zooms for nearly all my landscape work. Really, all digital SLRs these days are so competent that it hardly matters what equipment you use, and I could perfectly well do my work on any system.
I like Pentax because their cameras are small and tough.In the days before digital, I made traditional darkroom prints on fiber-based paper and colored them with Marshall’s oils, just as hand colorists have done for decades. About eight years ago I started experimenting with using artist acrylic paints instead of oils, largely because acrylics are faster drying and less toxic. It took about a year for me to get used to the new medium, and I only figured it out by doing scores of bad pictures.In about 2008 I started working on black and white inkjet prints, trying to figure out how to transition from film into digital for my work. Once again, I spent many months doing bad work and throwing it out until I was able to find a combination of paper, ink and method that satisfies me.Right now I print on an Epson 7600 printer outfitted with pure carbon-pigment black ink; the paper I use is Stonehenge printmaker’s paper.
Red Rock 2012.74, 11″ x 15″. This photo was taken at Red Rock Canyon outside of Law Vegas.AP: Thanks for such big and detailed introduction to your working process; I am sure your readers will like it much. What is the formula for success in your activity?Bob: The only formula I know that succeeds in art – as in most of life – is hard work and paying attention. Red Rock 2012.79, 22″ x 30″. A desert scene at Red Rock Canyon outside Las vegas, Nevada.AP: We will definitely contact Craig Hickman and do our best to take an interview with him. Is there someone who supports you in your creativity?Bob: My family, of course, for giving me the physical and emotional room to pursue something as tenuous and as unlikely as art.
My son is a bird photographer and writer; we often do photo trips together. I also have a painter friend I check in with periodically to compare work and talk shop.AP: Tell us three lessons you believe are really important for every photographer?Bob:. Look at as much art – not just photography – as you can find time for. I am especially fond lately of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. Take drawing lessons – this will improve your photography immensely, more than any amount of new gear. Go out and shoot as much as you possibly can, and make prints of your best results.Bob, thank you so much for sharing such amazing and inspiring story with us!
It’s very incredible. Your fine art hand-colored black and white photographs look fantastic. We wish you a brilliant success, more great shots and continuous inspiration.
To learn more about Bob Keefer photography, please visit his personal website.
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